


A Loneliness Unbroken

by blakunicorn



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 16:21:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11317128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blakunicorn/pseuds/blakunicorn
Summary: The Sole Survivor has trouble picking a faction. So she makes an alternate choice.





	A Loneliness Unbroken

**Author's Note:**

> The line spacing is all wonky because basic coding is beyond me. Sorry.

A Loneliness Unbroken

 

"So you're really going to do this?" Nick Valentine asked softly.

  
The synthetic sleuth didn't have hair, but that didn't stop him from removing the fedora from his head; rubbing a metal hand across his brow in consternation.

  
The vaulter looked up at him.

  
"Yes," she responded firmly. 

  
She'd had a name once.

  
Something multi-syllabic and soft that her husband would exhale before sleeping. But she didn't use it anymore. Had lost it somewhere along the way like she'd lost her family; her pleasant musings; her neighbors; her home.

  
Her name was a relic of an old time.

  
Much like the dented mailbox she stopped at from time to time when they passed through Sanctuary Hills. ( _Why does she stop at the mail box?_ Nick always wondered. _And peer inside as if she were expecting a letter? Some type of love note, hastily written?_ ).

Why?

  
When postage was obsolete. Moth-eaten.  Like her name.

  
Just like the faded picture frame she would finger in her gutted living room. Bits of wood held together by adhesive bought off Trashcan Carla.

  
The picture was too damaged to properly display the beaming family. But there was a hint of gold in the corner of the plastic paper. A curve of a mouth. Or easy smile.

  
"He's gone," the vaulter would always murmur. Staring down at what was little more than kindling.

  
Nick never knew if she meant her husband or her son.

  
"Will you tell the others?" Nick asked gently. When she'd finished unloading all of her weapons. When she'd stuffed the supplies into the cabinet, not bothering to organize like she usually did.

  
"Danse knows already," she answered. "And Piper refuses to speak to me after our last disagreement over the Brotherhood. And I can't tell Cait. She'd rip me a new one. Then follow me inside."

She chuckled. Dry and slow like sandpaper.

  
It was hard for her to believe. That Cait, the foul-mouthed cage fighter with slit for eyes and warbled breath had become her most loyal companion.

  
Her friend.

  
As had Nick.

  
The vaulter cast a sidelong glance at her pensive follower. Seemed to second-guess herself before venturing: "You know, Nick...you don't have to come inside with me," she reminded.

  
If it was possible, the synth blushed. "I know, but we've come this far already. And I..."

  
He hesitated. Goodbyes should be saved for the end, right?

  
She saved him from the bout of awkwardness. Tilted her head in acknowledgement. Then she began to move towards the west gate. In the direction of Vault 111.

  
She'd even put on the indigo jumpsuit. It seemed fitting somehow, to put it back on. Even though the vault suit hung off her body like second skin; as if it were trying to escape her. Symbolism probably.

  
And she was leaving him. Ten steps ahead already.

  
So Nick followed.

  
. . .

  
She'd been at a crossroads. The vaulter.

  
Had endeared herself (perhaps obligated was a better word?) to three warring parties.

  
The Railroad.

The Brotherhood of Steel.

The Institute.

  
She didn't consider herself to be one of them--not really. She ran errands as needed; picked off targets. Collected gear.

And she'd made friends along the way. Glory and Haylen. The sandy haired doctor from the Institute.

  
She'd even gotten close to love when Danse kissed her out of the blue. Clumsily and sweet.

  
But she'd balked when they asked her to choose a side.

  
Desdemona, carefully.

  
Maxson, forcefully.

  
And Father--that is, Shaun--had called her Mother.

  
_Do this for me._

  
They'd asked her to kill for them even though they didn't have the right. Even though they knew she was conflicted and still had not acclimated to this new world. A world where firearms passed for apparel and bodies littered the landscape like new age flowers. Red and tilting. 

  
Kill, they commanded. For the cause.

  
And she'd bitten her tongue. Unsure.

  
She didn't belong to them. Or with them.

  
She didn't belong period.

  
Not to the abolitionists or the military. Not to the underground scientists or the settlers. Not even to the Commonwealth.

She was in the wrong time. Had the wrong mindset.

Or maybe she was wrong herself.

  
Another old world relic languishing with no purpose.

  
The bottom of her heel stung against her boot. _I'm little more than scrap._

  
It hurt to admit it, but it was true.

  
But no more.

  
Mother, Shaun had said. Tripping over the word. Unskilled with such unchecked affection. His golden-flecked eyes so much like hers.

  
Mother.

  
It should have enlivened her. His words. His wide eyes and wizened face.

It should have made her hopeful. _Hope._

  
But it didn't.

  
She'd already lost him.

  
She knew it the moment she'd woken from cryogenic sleep. Even as she'd stumbled outside; hunted for her child.

  
Traipsing through bog and brush with Piper at her side and later Cait. She'd sensed--her mother's intuition, thawed finally--she'd _known_ that Shaun was lost to her. _Forever_.

  
She'd found him at the Institute but not really. Not found. 

  
Shaun was still out there.

  
Or maybe he was in _there_.

  
Tucked away inside the vault still. In Nate's arms. Safe. There.

  
Inside.

  
Where she should be.

  
She should have never left the chamber. Should have stirred only to fall back asleep.

  
Nate.

  
_I wasn't meant to leave that place_ , she thought as the twisted yellow came into the view. A hidden door. A secret elevator.

  
She'd decided.

  
Rather than kill for organizations she didn't believe in (Or understand really. What is the goal? she'd asked. But no one answered. Not one of them. They only commanded). Rather than point the curved barrel of a rifle at those she called friend, she retraced her steps.

  
But first, a cryptic goodbye to Codsworth ( _When will you be back, Madam?_ he chirped). She didn't answer.

  
A free-flowing note for Piper because the journalist would appreciate a handwritten missive.

  
Nothing to Cait. Too painful. And Cait would follow her. 

  
But the vaulter had asked Nick to accompany her.

  
"One last job," she told him. Her eyes a faraway light.

  
She wanted Nick along because he was her friend. But there was another reason.

The detective was good with electronics. A computer whiz. He would make sure that Vault 111 would never reopen.

  
. . .

  
The walk down the corridor was a silent one. Long. Her combat boots clamorous against steel flooring. Muted echoes.

  
"Is that...?" Nick murmured when he saw the hunkered body. Nate twisted into a permanent rictus of pain. "I'm so sorry."

  
Her eyes lingered on her husband's white-wisped eyelids; those beloved hands clenched like an aborted embrace.

  
The wedding band wouldn't fit on her husband's finger. Not now. Never again. So she slid the burnished silver into his pocket. Stared into eyes that were vacant and glassy. So still. 

  
"I'm here," she whispered needlessly.

  
Nick busied himself by poking around the computer terminal. The detective couldn't bear to watch his friend climb into the sleep chamber, so he pressed at buttons, entered codes. Recited literature as if it were stream of consciousness. Broken stanzas. Misplaced verbs.

  
"You and I have a lot in common, you know that?" he asked her suddenly.

  
The detective's back was to her. But he knew that she was inside. Settling in. Moments away from leaving.

  
_Did this constitute death?_ he thought. Before shaking his head. _Not yet._

  
"We have a lot in common?" she asked dreamily. Repeating his words. Not comprehending. Already en route.

  
"Yes. You and I...we're creatures from another time. Woefully out of place in this here new republic. If we can call it that... "

  
He coughed. Had never done it before. Not once. Had no need to expel air like that. "I'm a synth and all. Got all the wiring and parts, but my memories are human. Old. They belong to another time. To another person. The incongruity of it all...well...it makes it real hard for even someone as long in the tooth as myself to stare down those dark days..."

  
The vaulter licked her lips. Some salt residue there. Tears or overcooked stew, she couldn't tell which. But what did it matter now? 

  
"I've learned to live with my memories," Nick concluded. His eyes on her now. Metallic and soft. (How could that be?). "It's hard going, but you manage." 

  
It was the closest he would come to asking. _Don't._

  
But she'd already made up her mind. Days ago. Or months, really, when she'd first stepped out of that chamber. Out into the barrenness. The outside. A wasteland.

  
"I don't know how," she said simply.

  
Don't know how to carry the memories. To kill on command. To manage all the forgetting that's required to live in this new world.

  
Nate.

  
Shaun.

  
All the people she'd killed for causes ill-defined.

  
Nick nodded. A flicker of something on his face. Some type of activation or trigger that made him look pitiably human.

  
. . .

  
_It's not death_ , he decided. When he saw the smile on her face. Frozen there now. A permanent lilt of her cheek.

  
_It's not death at all. It's acceptance._

  
He murmured to himself as he let himself out of the storage room. Out of Vault 111.

His heels clacking loudly like the applause at the end of a momentous scene.

  
The detective recited words that belonged to the original Nick Valentine but that had stayed with him for what seemed like a millennia: 

 _Deep into that darkness peering_  
_Long I stood there wondering, fearing_  
_Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before..._

  
_Back into the chamber turning_  
_All my soul within me burning..._

The detective stopped mid-sentence. His footfalls fading. No breath, no sound.

  
"Oh dear," he said out loud.

How could he place it? Was it regret overcoming him now? 

"Oh dear." Again. Softer. Fading. 

  
He continued walking. Up the elevator. Out.

At the end of the final hallway, Nick Valentine tried to finish the poem: 

  
_Back into the chamber turning_  
_All my soul within me burning..._

  
But he found that he could not.  
 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter title and ending poem are from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven." Nick Valentine references the poem during the game so I figured I'd incorporate it.


End file.
